Penny Junor

Penelope "Penny" Jane Junor^[1] (born 6 October 1949) is an English journalist and author.

Education

Born in Leatherhead, Surrey, Junor was educated at Benenden School in Kent and read History at St Andrews University, but left in her second year to get married.^[2]

Career

Junor has written several books on the British Royal Family; she has written biographies of Diana, Princess of Wales (1982) and Charles, Prince of Wales (1987 and 1998), and Charles and Diana: Portrait of a Marriage (1991). The Firm: The Troubled Life of the House of Windsor followed in 2005. Her work on the Waleses "alienated" both of them and she reportedly considers the experience the worst of her career.^[3] She has also written and had published a book titled Prince William: The Man Who Will Be King. This biography of Prince William ends with his marriage to Kate Middleton, now Duchess of Cambridge. Junor's biography of Prince Harry, Prince Harry: Brother, Soldier, Son, was published in 2014.

Junor's other books include works on Margaret Thatcher (1983), actor Richard Burton (1986), John Major (1993) (although she would later said in an interview that she found Major to be a failure as British Prime Minister) and Wonderful Tonight, (2007, published with the sub-title George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me in the United States), the co-authored memoir of Pattie Boyd a former wife of two well-known musicians. Junor assisted Sir Cliff Richard in writing the number one best selling My Life, My Way (2008) which sold over 250,000 copies and Shaun Ellis with his book The Man Who Lives with Wolves (2009).

Junor has worked for the Evening Standard and a column for Private Eye lasted five years.^[2] She presented the television consumer programme 4 What It's Worth from 1982 to 1984, and The Travel Show for nine years.^[2]

Family

The newspaper editor John Junor was her father and her brother Roderick is a former leader writer for The Daily Telegraph and speechwriter for Mrs Thatcher. Junor married ex-restaurateur James Leith (the brother of Prue) in 1970. She has 4 children with her husband; their eldest son is the journalist Sam Leith. John Junor was the subject of Home Truths: Life Around My Father (2002), an unflattering account.

References